


library magic

by westwind



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 06:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19351540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwind/pseuds/westwind
Summary: "The wizard visits every seven years, so the last time his wagon stopped in the field behind the blacksmith’s shop, Petr was just a baby too young to remember it. His brother Max was five then and won’t stop blabbering about how he got to see the wagon’s big side doors swing open and inside were flashing lights and things that made weird rustling sounds and books and books and books."After the Mighty Nein's adventuring days are over, Caleb travels with a library in an enchanted wagon. He comes across a stranger who's nevertheless familiar.





	library magic

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ["Library Magic" by The Head and the Heart.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg4VCNyzI2I)

Petr is nine when the wizard comes back to his village. The wizard visits every seven years, so the last time his wagon stopped in the field behind the blacksmith’s shop, Petr was just a baby too young to remember it. His brother Max was five then and won’t stop blabbering about how he got to see the wagon’s big side doors swing open and inside were flashing lights and things that made weird rustling sounds and books and books and books. Some as tall as a five-year-old boy and half as wide—Petr thinks Max must be lying, at least about that.

Anyway, this time Petr has to see the wizard. Max takes ages to put on his boots and coat and ma won’t let Petr walk into the village without him, even when it’s hardly far at all and no one’s ever gotten lost going across the creek and through the Hornsbys’ pasture, but finally, finally he’s ready to go. Out the front door and into the windy spring morning and around all the puddles on the cart track because even though they look just right for jumping in, he can’t make a good impression with muddy trousers.

There’s already a big crowd of people out in the field—“You made us _late_ ,” Petr says and frowns. Except he doesn’t have time to be angry with Max, because he’s busy squeezing in between the onlookers, dodging knobby elbows to get a better look at the wizard’s wagon.

It’s pretty ordinary, really. Made all of wood that doesn’t look old but doesn’t look very new, either—there’s a signboard nailed to the top that’s spattered with bright-colored paint all over and has “Widogast’s Traveling Library” written on it in curlicued letters. Next to the words is a scribble that’s kind of hard to see, but it looks a little like a cat’s face with a goofy smile.

Petr almost doesn’t realize what’s missing. Then: “Where does he hitch the horse?” he blurts out.

The woman standing next to him chuckles. “’s magic,” she says, like that’s supposed to answer Petr’s question and not make ten more pop into his head.

He doesn’t think too long on any of them because the wagon’s doors open and the wizard comes out. Max was telling the truth about one thing: he doesn’t look much like the woodcuts of sorcerers in the book of fairytales that they saw once. The wizard doesn’t have a beard, just a little scruff on his chin like when Petr’s da forgets to shave, and he doesn’t have a big hat. He wears an ordinary sort of brownish coat and a scarf that winds around and around his neck.

Petr stands on his tiptoes to see behind him, into a room with no flashing lights but so many books. There are big books all bound in leather that look soft-smooth to the touch and little books with tattered pages and even one that’s clamped shut with a big metal lock, like the words need to be kept trapped inside.

The wizard’s talking, now, but he speaks so quietly that Petr can’t hear him over all the chatting and calling out, people asking for an adventure novel or a book of romance tales. Some want spells, too—the widow Summers is chattering about a charm to help her peonies grow better.

What a silly thing to use magic for. If Petr had a wagon full of books and spells, he’d use them to find out what the stars are made of or how to talk to birds, not to mend a broken mill-wheel like Mr. Arowitz is asking, now.

No matter how much Petr wriggles and squeezes, he can’t make it any further in the crowd, so he has to wait while a few people at a time walk up the steps and around the little room to find a book. Max told him, but he still can’t help blurting out, “And no one has to even _pay_ for them?”

“No, dummy,” Max says, scuffing at the dirt with the toe of his shoe. “You read it for a week, and then _poof_ —it disappears. Back to the wizard, but no one knows how.”

Finally it’s their turn to step up to the wagon. First Petr just runs his fingers over the smooth-rough-silky spines, all the way to one end of the shelves and back again before he actually starts to read the titles there. And then there are just too many—it makes his head spin to see _Voyages Among the Ashari_ and _The Dragon’s Battle_ and _Principles of Spatial Geometry_ all stamped in shiny letters and know that he can only pick one. Eventually, though, Max’s bored tugging on his sleeve gets annoying and he grabs his selection.

But that’s only half of why Petr wanted to come here. He looks around and sees the wizard talking with the mayor’s daughter. Somehow, he’s ended up with a cat draped around his neck like a scarf, arching its back where he scratches it with one hand. There’s a whole cluster of people standing around with books in their hands, too.

“Come on,” Max says, tugging again. “If we don’t have our chores done before lunch I’ll say it’s your fault for being so slow.”

Breaking away from his brother, Petr hurries into the middle of the circle of adults, not caring that interrupting is rude and they all probably have important things to ask. Not as important as this. “Hello, Mr. Widogast?” He sounds out the name from the sign carefully. “My name is Petr Rowanson, and I wanted to ask—could you teach me magic?”

Some of the adults laugh, which makes Petr stand up as tall as he can and square his shoulders. The wizard doesn’t join them, at least, but he’s quiet. His hand stays still on the sleepy cat’s back.

“That is a very serious question, Petr Rowanson.” The wizard has an odd rumbling accent that Petr’s never heard before. He doesn’t look straight at Petr, but his eyes are blue and look a little sad. “And in exchange I will give you a very serious answer: no, I cannot. It is not something to hand out like a sweet or a book.” And then he nods to the book Petr’s hugging to his chest and turns away.

And that’s that—the mayor’s daughter starts talking again, and the wizard doesn’t look back at Petr even for a moment. He walks back to Max and doesn’t answer any of his brother’s questions about what he did that for, anyway, and what the wizard said to him. 

—

So Petr follows behind Max and doesn’t say anything the whole walk home but keeps the book tucked close to his chest. All the time that he’s cleaning out the pigs’ pen and gathering the chickens’ eggs, though, he’s thinking, too. And when the sun is starting to set behind the trees, he slips off back across the creek and through the pasture alone.

The field behind the blacksmith’s shop is empty of people, but the wagon’s still there with its doors shut up. Petr swallows down the thumping heartbeat trying to climb up his throat and walks up the steps to knock. No answer. He knocks again, and a third time to be sure, and he’s about to walk all the way back home when he passes around the back of the wagon and sees a window, covered up with curtains but half-open.

He shouldn’t. Even if the wizard isn’t around, he probably has boxes and bottles of spells that eat snooping boys for dinner. But the book of fairytales with the woodcuts of wizards was full of people who got what they wanted by doing very brave and very stupid things.

The window’s not too far off the ground, and Petr’s short but he can still scramble through all right. He thinks he’s pretty quiet, but as soon as the tips of his boots touch the ground a voice calls, “Nott? Is that you?”

Petr freezes. He’s in a little curtained-off room that looks like a tiny kitchen with a table and two rickety stools and there’s nowhere at all to hide, which doesn’t matter anyway because the curtain twitches and the wizard steps in.

“You know you are quite welcome to use the door.” He notices Petr and blinks. “ _Was?_ Who are you?”

All in one breath, Petr says, “I asked you to teach me magic today and I know you said you wouldn’t but I wanted to ask one more time because it’s _important_.”

The wizard’s eyebrows furrow together like fuzzy caterpillars and he frowns. He has a face that looks like it’s good at frowning. “There’s no need to be scared,” he says slowly. “But tell me—you say this is important. What is all the bother about?”

Petr looks down at his shoes. He isn’t scared like the wizard said. He’s just…thinking. Finally, he looks up again and opens his palm, and between one breath and the next there’s a little flame dancing in it.

When the flame sputters out after a moment, Petr sees the wizard’s blue eyes go wide. He looks a little like ma does when she takes Petr’s great-grandma’s old necklace out of its box, sad and happy all at once. Then in another moment, he doesn’t look like anything at all when he says, “You have a gift, Petr Rowanson. It is indeed an important gift, and you will have to be very careful with it.”

None of that is about teaching Petr what to do with the bits of magic that he feels sparking at the tips of his fingers and toes, but the wizard sounds serious so he nods a couple of times. Then he asks, “But can you teach me?”

“I can help you to begin your studies. Point you in the right direction.” The wizard is mostly muttering to himself by the end of this, and he’s swishing back through the curtain before he’s finished the sentence. He never told Petr to stay put, so Petr follows him, into the book room from before and through a sliding wooden door that opens before the wizard even touches it.

This next room is even more cramped than the kitchen—there’s one big bed with the covers mussed up and a much smaller one in the corner that’s all made up perfectly, like no one’s slept there in a while. Books are everywhere here, too, except that they’re stacked up crazily in piles that look like they’d fall over if you bumped into them. The book on top of the stack closest to Petr has a picture of a shirtless man and a woman in an enormously frilly dress lying in a field of flowers. He doesn’t get a chance to look closer because the wizard pulls open one small drawer in a whole wall of tiny drawers, and Petr almost gasps because he’d swear he saw a heap of little eyeballs inside. _This_ is what the stories were talking about.

But the wizard closes that one and instead opens one full of a reddish powder and scoops a bit of it into a small sack. He turns around and doesn’t seem too surprised to see Petr standing there, just says, “We will start you with the first spell I learned to conjure: Dancing Lights.”

Back in the kitchen, the wizard clears a mug and a plate to one side of the table with his elbow to make room for the sack of powder and some paper and a quill pen. Petr tries to get a closer look at what’s written on the paper, but the wizard taps a finger on the table and says, “What is important is not magic for the sake of magic. It is useful; it does things for you, not you for it. This spell, this is good for lighting up the dark.”

Petr imagines himself staying with a book far after the candle’s been pinched out and smiles. “So what do I do?”

Magic, it turns out, involves a lot of reading things off a sheet of paper and writing them and only a little wiggling around your hands while saying funny words. It’s not bad, just different that Petr thought. He likes that books can teach him things like this, too.

He doesn’t like that he tries until the sun is all the way down but still hasn’t made a single light dance above the kitchen table. The wizard has four of them spinning lazily around his head, which only makes Petr more frustrated. “It is fine not to get it on the first try, or the hundredth,” the wizard says when Petr sighs and rests his forehead on the rough wood. “Learning takes time.”

“But I want to know it now!” Petr huffs as he sits up. He thinks of all the chained-up books in the next room hiding magic between their pages. “I want to know it all now,” he says, more quietly.

The wizard’s eyebrows do that caterpillar-crawl again. “But you are so young,” he says. He hasn’t looked Petr in the eyes all this time, but he does for a moment now. “When I was your age, I spent all my life chasing magic. It did not get me anywhere—anywhere good. You will not be any more or less if you can call fire in your hands.”

Petr sighs again. He’s heard the same sort of wait-til-you’re-grown-up thing from his ma and da too many times to count. But then he takes one deep breath, two, three, trying to let all the impatience out from his lungs, and when he rubs the phosphorus powder between his fingers, a little globe of light springs up in front of him.

“ _Ja_! That’s it!” The wizard’s hands twitch with excitement before he reaches across the table to clap Petr’s shoulder.

Petr just stares at the floating ball of brightness and feels the same sort of glowing in his chest.

He makes the globe wink in and out a few more times before the wizard looks out the window and starts fussing about how it’s late and Petr’s family must be worried. “You will go with your light,” he says, “and I will send Frumpkin here to walk with you.” He snaps his fingers and suddenly the cat that was around his shoulders that morning is sitting on the table, bumping its nose against Petr’s hand with an inquisitive _mrrph_.

Petr’s mouth drops open when the cat appears, but questions don’t get a chance to rush out of him because the wizard is handing him a small, leather-bound book. Inside is smooth, glossy paper—all blank. “What kind of book is this?”

The wizard chuckles. “This is your spell book. It is yours to fill up, to write what you learn.”

“Thank you,” Petr says, mostly out of manners that’ve been lectured into his head enough to be automatic because he’s been given a _book_ of his own to _keep_. When the shock wears off he says, “Thank you, for teaching me,” and then rushes forward to give the wizard a lightning-quick hug. He doesn’t turn Petr into a toad for touching him, but he does feel like hugging a bundle of sticks.

Then Petr walks down the wagon’s steps with the magical cat right behind him, curling between his legs and purring. His heart is beating almost as fast as it did when he snuck through the wizard’s window, but now it’s because magic is something _he_ can do and not just something out of a story. He’s going to learn it all.

—

The wizard Caleb Widogast watches the boy from the window of the wagon that has become as comfortable and familiar as an old coat. In the dark, he’s just a bobbing spot of light among tree-shadows and fireflies. The boy is short, has curly brown hair, but if Caleb lets his eyes go unfocused he can see another image ghosting over this one, a gangly redhead with a golden glow floating over his head and a cat at his heels. A boy going through the woods, going home. As he has many nights before and will many nights again, Caleb forgives him for what burns in his heart and his head.


End file.
